Willie, Waylon, and the Boys: How Nashville Outsiders Changed Country Music Forever

The tragic and inspiring story of the leaders of Outlaw country and their profound influence on today's Alt-Country and Americana superstars, tracing a path from Waylon Jennings' survival on 'the Day the Music Died' right through to The Highwaymen and on to the current creative and commercial explosion of artists like Chris Stapleton, Brandi Carlile, Tyler Childers, Jason Isbell, and The Highwomen.

On 2nd February 1959, Waylon Jennings, bassist for his best friend, the rock star Buddy Holly, gave up his seat on a charter flight. Jennings, then 21, joked that he hoped the plane, leaving without him, would crash. When it did, killing all aboard on "the Day the Music Died," he was devastated and and never fully recovered from the trauma. Jennings later switched to playing country music, going on to create the Outlaw movement with Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson, and subsequently forming The Highwaymen, country's first supergroup, with them. The foursome battled addiction, record companies, ex-wives, tragic violence, and the I.R.S. and D.E.A., en route to unprecedented mainstream success.

Today, their acolytes Jamey Johnson, Zach Bryan, Tyler Childers, Brandi Carlile, and Taylor Swift outsell all challengers, and country in its various forms is now the most popular of all genres. In this fascinating new book, Brian Fairbanks draws a direct line from Buddy Holly through the Outlaw stars of the 60s and 70s, all the way to the country headliners and more diverse, up-and-coming Nashville rebels of today. He brings the reader deep into the worlds of not only Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings, and Jessi Colter, but also artists like Chris Stapleton, Sturgill Simpson, Ryan Bingham, and Jason Isbell—stadium-filling masters whose stories have not yet been told in book form. Fairbanks also explores newer, more diverse artists such as The Highwomen, Brittney Spencer, and Allison Russell, and brilliantly demonstrates how a twenty-one-year-old bass playing plane crash survivor helped change the course of American popular music forever.